Faith Culminates in the Truth That God Is Love

Catechesis by Pope John Paul II on God the FatherGeneral Audience, Wednesday, 2 October 1985 - in Italian & Spanish

"1. "God is love...." These words are contained in one of the last books of the New Testament, the First Letter of St. John (4:16). They are the keystone of the truth about God. That truth is revealed through numerous words and many events until it reaches the full certainty of faith with the coming of Christ, and especially with his cross and resurrection. These words faithfully echo Christ's own statement: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).

The Church's faith reaches its peak in this supreme truth: God is love! In Christ's cross and resurrection he revealed himself definitively as love. "So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16).

2. The truth that God is love constitutes the apex of all that has been revealed "by the prophets and in these days by the Son..." as the Letter to the Hebrews states (1:1). This truth illumines the whole content of divine revelation, and particularly the revealed reality of the creation and of the covenant. Creation manifests the omnipotence of God the Creator. But the exercise of omnipotence is definitively explained by means of love. God created because he could do so, because he is omnipotent. But his omnipotence was guided by wisdom and moved by love. This is the work of creation. The work of redemption has a more powerful eloquence and offers us a more radical demonstration. Love remains as the expression of omnipotence in the face of evil, in the face of the sin of creatures. Only omnipotent love can draw forth good from evil and new life from sin and death.

3. Love as power gives life and animates. It is present in the whole of revelation. The living God, the God who gives life to all living beings, is he of whom the Psalms speak: "These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust" (Ps 104:27-29). The image is drawn from the heart of creation. This picture has anthropomorphic features (like many texts of Sacred Scripture). But this anthropomorphism has its own biblical motivation. Seeing that man is created in the image and likeness of God, there is a reason for speaking of God "in the image and likeness" of man. However, this anthropomorphism does not obscure God's transcendence. It does not reduce God to human dimensions. It observes all the rules of analogy and of analogical language, as well as those of the analogy of faith.

4. God makes himself known in the covenant, first of all to his chosen people. The God of the covenant manifests the properties of his Being, following a pedagogic progression. Those properties are usually called his attributes. They are attributes of the moral order above all, in which the God who is love gradually reveals himself. God reveals himselfâ€”especially in the covenant of Sinaiâ€”as the lawgiver, the supreme source of law. This legislative authority finds its full expression and confirmation in the attributes of the divine action which Sacred Scripture makes known to us.

The inspired books of the Old Testament manifest them to us. For example, we read in the Book of Wisdom: "For your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.... You who are sovereign in strength judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose" (Wis 12:16-18).

And again: "Who can measure his majestic power? And who can fully recount his mercies?" (Sir 18:5).

The writings of the Old Testament emphasize God's justice, but also his clemency and mercy.

They underline especially God's faithfulness to the covenant, which is an aspect of his "immutability" (cf. e.g., Ps 111:7-9; Is 65:1-2, 16-19).

They speak of God's anger, but this is always the just anger of a God who is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Ps 145:8). They always set out in relief, in the above-mentioned anthropomorphic concept, God's "jealousy" of his covenant with his people. But they always present it as an attribute of love: "the zeal of the Lord of hosts" (Is 9:7).

We have already said that God's attributes are not distinguished from his essence. So it would be more exact to speak, not so much of a just, faithful, clement God, but rather of God who is justice, faithfulness, clemency, mercyâ€”just as St. John has written that "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16).

5. The Old Testament prepared for the definitive revelation of God as love with an abundance of inspired texts. In one of these we read: "You are merciful to all, for you can do all things.... For you love all things that exist and loathe none of the things which you have made, for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?... You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord who loves the living" (Wis 11:23-26).

Can it not be said that these words of the Book of Wisdom already shown forth clearly the God who is love (Amor-Caritas) by means of the creator "Being" of God?

But we see other texts, such as that of the Book of Jonah: "For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and who repents of evil" (Jon 4:2).

Or also Psalm 145: "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made" (Ps 145:8-9).

The more we read the writings of the major prophets, the more the countenance of the God of love is revealed to us.

The Lord speaks to Israel by the mouth of Jeremiah: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you" (in Hebrew hesed) (Jer 31:3).

To quote the words of Isaiah: "But Zion said: 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.' 'Can a woman forget her child, that she should have no compassion on the child of her womb? Even though she may forget, yet I will not forget you'" (Is 49:14-15).

How significant in God's words is this reference to maternal love. God's mercy is made known by the unequaled tenderness of motherhood, besides being made known to us by fatherhood. Again Isaiah says: "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you" (Is 54:10).

6. This marvelous preparation carried out by God in the history of the Old Covenant, especially by means of the prophets, awaited its definitive fulfillment. The definitive word of God-Love came with Christ. It was not merely pronounced, but lived in the paschal mystery of the cross and of the resurrection. Paul announces it in the Letter to the Ephesians: "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)" (2:4-5).

Indeed we can give fullness to our profession of faith in "God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth" with St. John's stupendous definition: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16)."